I recently had my passport renewed and got a brand, spanking new one. In my old passport I had some visas that are still valid. I am returning to one of those countries soon. Is the visa still valid even if the passport it is in is not valid? Do I need to take both passports with me? Is the visa valid if it has been removed from old passport?
Just take you old passport along. A visa is a visa and if it appears to be a genuine document, it will be honored by immigration.
Check with the airline and ask if they will board you. The airline has responsibility for any passenger that they board without proper documentation, so they are very fussy about that. It might the the airline that refuses to accept it.
Ask the the embassy of the country in question. Only they can know.
A true story, although it happened 48 years ago. A mathematician I knew very well spent a year in the US on leave (at my school). During the year a daughter was born. He was advised to get her a US passport and did. When he flew home with his wife and now three kids, the airline picked up the visas that permitted him to stay in the US. But there were only four and there five of them. I should mention that his wife’s passport had been modified to include the daughter. (I am not sure that these days, minor children can be included a parent’s passport, but it was common in those days.) At any rate, the checkin agent didn’t want to let them pass because they had only 4 visas. Then of course, he showed the infant’s passport. Well, if she is a US citizen, where is her Australian visa? She is also an Australian citizen, here look in my wife’s passport. Well then where is her US visa. Believe it or not this argument went around in circles for an hour before the agent let them board the plane, predicting that they would be refused entry in Australia. Of course, they never showed the Australians the US passport.
I had a slightly similar incident with an Air Canada checkin agent in Barbados a couple years ago. For one reason or another (mainly it lasts only five years), I never bothered to get a Canadian passport and travel on a US passport. I enter Canada showing that and my Canadian citizenship card. Never a problem. Except this agent who didn’t want to let me board a plane because I made the mistake of showing her the Canadian citizenship card. She swore that the Canadian authorities would not allow a citizen to enter the country without a Canadian passport. Nonesense, I do it all the time. Finally she threw up her hands and said it was a new policy. It isn’t more then two years later. And you don’t need a visa to enter Canada with a US passport. I have been careful to keep my Canadian citizenship card hidden from airline agents.
Well, over here they ask you if you have any valid visa remaining in the old passport before they issue a new one.
You should check with the embassy of the visa issuing country. While everyone that I know allows you to enter if you present your current and visa containing passports, immigration law is rather byzantine and you should always be cautious.
I’ve never had a problem traveling to or from the UK, US or Middle East with a new passport and the old one with the visas in it. Like the man said, though, you’ll want to ask the immigration officials in the receiving country.
This. Practices will differ from country to country, but I’ve never heard of a visa becoming null just because of a new passport. Whenever I renew my US passport at the embassy here in Bangkok, they give me a letter to take to Thai Immigration asking them to transfer my Thai visa into my new passport.
However, whenever the wife renews her Thai passport, she doesn’t get her US visa transferred into the new one. As per instructions from the US Embassy, she just takes both old and new passports with her when she goes over there. Never been a problem.